


Rust and Sleeplessness

by VivWiley



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Episode: s04e24 Gethsemane, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-17
Updated: 2013-04-17
Packaged: 2017-12-08 17:28:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/764053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VivWiley/pseuds/VivWiley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What do you do when your life is returned to you?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rust and Sleeplessness

If something shatters, with enough patience, and time and glue, you can put it back together again. 

"I have cancer." 

He didn't shatter.

He disintegrated. Dissolved. Vanished.

"I have cancer."

Such a simple sentence. Subject, verb, object. His rational mind, what little of it was left, coolly noted that, as always, she had been direct. Precise. Exact.

Meanwhile, the rest of his mind and heart and soul were being ripped into shreds by the maelstrom of the fear and longing and disbelief that her announcement unleashed.

No. He hadn't shattered. It was so much more irrevocable than that. He wasn't sure that words even existed to describe the devastation and desolation that her words left behind. There was nothing left.

There could be nothing left, because if she had cancer, it had to be his fault.

There could be nothing left, because if she died, then there would no point in his living. 

Standing in that harshly lighted room, the antiseptic smells of the hospital surrounding them, the x-rays of her tiny, fragile skull before them, he heard himself stammering words of disbelief and denial. Heard himself promising that "they" would beat this, when all the while his soul was keening in grief, already mourning her loss.

Because he'd always known that he would lose her.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

He did not react well in the long run. 

After saving her from an even more untimely death at the hands of that butcher Dr. Scanlon, he found that it was too painful to be near her on a daily basis. Her scent, her presence, her slowly muting radiance serving only to remind him of what he would lose. But he couldn't stay away either. 

He needed her like sunlight and oxygen and mystery.

So he subtly encouraged her innate stubbornness about continuing to work, knowing it was selfish and possibly wrong, but knowing that it was what she wanted, and what he had to have. He continued to accept field work, quietly rejoicing in their times alone on the road, even while he watched her tire, and fade a little more.

So he pushed her away, questioned her, ran away from her, forced her to rescue him again. He pushed and pulled at her, trying to enforce a distance between them to lessen the pain of contact, but unable to completely sever the bond -- all the while wanting nothing more than to stop the world and rock her in his arms forever.

All the while knowing that that was the one extreme possibility forever denied him. 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

Her treatments began.

She went twice a week for six weeks for the initial series of combined therapies, and thereafter once every other week.

The treatments weakened her, made her sick, made her imminently aware of her own mortality, but she was getting treated.

He regarded that as a major victory.

And there were other victories. Her tumor had shrunk slightly and there were signs that it was less prevalent in her blood and lymph system than when she'd started the therapies. Eventually they might discuss surgery, although her doctor had labeled that particular option "inadvisable," something Mulder translated in his own lexicon to "pointlessly risky."

For the time being at least, the risk was too great.

She was more vulnerable than he'd ever seen her. She allowed him to see her that way, sick and retching her guts out from the chemo -- she actually allowed him to hold her hair back; to hand her a damp cloth afterwards and the glass of water with just a tiny bit of mint mouthwash in it to alleviate the taste of it all.

It broke his heart.

It nearly gave him back his soul.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It was at that time that They came to him with their dark offer that promised light.

He had only to die - a convenient fiction - and she would live. But he could not say goodbye. He could not tell her why he was leaving her alone with her battle. He could accept his role as a pawn.

A pawn she would undoubtedly despise as a coward.

He had no options, no choices.

She would live.

He died.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

He died. He'd left her. Abandoned her in the middle of her final battle.

She knew somehow that he wasn't really dead. She even thought that perhaps he'd made some pointlessly heroic sacrifice. Or that he'd finally gotten the information that would lead him to Samantha. Or perhaps he had simply, finally, been unable to face the death of one more person he'd learned to care about. It didn't matter. He'd left her.

Her cancer treatments that had seemed conventional and probably pointless suddenly began to work. The tumor disappeared. Her blood was clear of cancer. She no longer cared. Her fire had been smothered under the weight of the waiting and the longing and the loneliness.

The cancer had made her face her final truth and untruth. She loved him, needed him, wanted him.

She'd harbored no illusions that she would make a dramatic deathbed confession to him about this love, this need. He didn't deserve that burden, and it was simply not her style. But she had finally recognized this truth, and now in her rage at his abandonment she imagined what the conversation might have been:

“I love you, Mulder.”  
“Oh, Dana.”

“Fox, I have something to tell you...”  
“I already know.”

But none of the conversations she imagined rang right. None of her fictitious declarations sounded like them at all. 

She supposed it inevitable.

Words had never been a strong suit.

Since it appeared that she would live after all, she set about preparing for that possibility.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

She couldn't face the X-Files. She felt, in a small corner of her soul, that she was betraying Mulder by allowing the Files to stay closed, even after Skinner had offered her the chance to take them on. She had considered the possibility for several days, but finally decided that if she opened them again it would be for all the wrong reasons. When she told Skinner her decision, and requested assignment to a teaching position at Quantico, she was surprised by the nearly open flash of disappointment that crossed his impassive face.

She was vaguely disappointed in herself, truth be told. Returning to the classroom after being a field agent seemed safe, secure, and quite...boring. But she also knew that Mulder had taught her too much about paranoia for her to ever trust another partner. And just as she couldn't face the X?Files, she thought that she probably could never go into the field with another agent at her back.

Her mother, at least, was pleased with her decision to teach.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

And then it happened. She was called back to the field. Listening to Skinner describe the case, a series of unexplained deaths in Oregon, with peculiar skin markings that the coroner was at a loss to explain, she was surprised to find herself excited. Almost...happy. The resemblance of this case to the very first one that she and Mulder had investigated had not escaped Skinner’s attention, nor hers, and so she took the temporary assignment without argument.

As it turned out, the case was far more plausible and ordinary than it had initially appeared. Three teens had died, but purely due to their own ignorance about the lethal effects of certain fungi that they had mistaken for psychotropics. She quickly identified the odd bumps on their skin as contact allergy lesions, and helped bring the local coroner up to date on how to test for more exotic drugs. It was tedious work, and tiring, but she still found it exhilarating in an odd way. She would, perhaps, need to re-think her assignment to Quantico.

She finished her work on the afternoon of the third day that she was there, but was unable to get a flight home until the next morning.

Knowing it was foolish, knowing it was uncharacteristically sentimental of her, and for once not caring, she got in her rental car and drove the 45 minutes over to the town where it had all begun. 

Driving along the rode this time, there was no flash of light, no missing time. She supposed that it would have been redundant anyway. Time, which had been too short, was now too long.

When she arrived at the town, she realized that she didn't really know what she was doing here. It had begun to drizzle slightly, and as she absent-mindedly turned on her windshield wipers, she saw the town's cemetery just ahead. It was a landmark of sorts in her life, so she pulled into the parking lot, and sat for a moment, wondering again at the odd impulse that had brought her there. 

She had changed into jeans and sneakers and was wearing her waterproof trenchcoat, so she decided to walk over through the graveyard for a bit. The dead no longer troubled her

And so it ended as it begun. In a graveyard. In the rain.

 

She walked for while, until she found herself at a familiar grave. Looking down at the name, she was suddenly in another time.

It had become her habit in the last few months to talk to Mulder out loud when she was alone, a way of connecting to him, of venting her anger at him, at feeling marginally less lonely. She wondered what Mulder the psychologist would have made of it.

Closing her eyes, she could almost see him, feel him, smell him. And standing there, she felt the anger that she had carried for all these month begin to slowly dissolve and slip away.

“Goddammit, Mulder. Why did you do it? Why did you leave me? Didn’t you know? Didn’t you know that I needed you there? Didn’t you know that I needed you?” She asked the questions for the millionth time.

The quiet fall of the rain was the only answer she needed this time. He’d left because that was who he was. She still couldn’t bring herself to think of him as dead, but she could now almost accept his loss.

She tucked away the last tiny shred of her anger -- it was a fire that she would need in the coming years of silent evenings and hollow nights.

Then she walked out of the graveyard; out of her past.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

She knew when she returned to DC that she would be making changes. She would resign from the Bureau. The time in the field had reawakened her to what it was to live, but had also held too many painful moments. Moments when she had instinctively turned to her partner only to remember that she no longer had one.

There were other careers that carried no such moments. There were places that she had never been to with Mulder. She would find them, and live in them.

She was soaked and shivering when she finally got back to her hotel room. Frozen from the rain and the wind and the cold that she had carried in her soul ever since Mulder had gone.

Quickly discarding her clothes, she took a long, hot shower -- letting this water cascade down her hair and body, rinsing away the mud and the tears and the cold.

Stepping out of the shower, into the steamed-up bathroom, she felt the last of the cold leave her and tiredness seep into the frozen places in her heart.

She wrapped herself in the thick terry cloth robe that she had packed at the last minute, glad for the soft comfort.

The rain had stopped, and the night turned mild, so she ventured out onto the balcony of her room, the view of the lights reflecting on the river a peaceful, beautiful draw.

Unconsciously she found herself repeating the words she’d said earlier that afternoon. “Dammit, Mulder, why did you leave? Didn’t you know?”

And for the first time she was answered.

“I didn’t know, Scully. I’m sorry. I’m sorry...I never...”

She turned around very slowly, and opened her eyes to meet the gaze of a ghost

Only it wasn’t a ghost, and that last tiny shred of anger that she’d tucked away sparked and blazed through her with a suddenness and fury that caught her off-guard.

Standing in the dim light reflected from her room, she was frozen again -- in shock, rage, disbelief, and relief. The conflicting emotions rooted her to the spot, paralyzing even her involuntary muscles until she suddenly realized that she wasn't even breathing. It didn’t matter. Time had clearly stopped, breathing must now be optional.

Lungs finally protested the lack of oxygen, and she heard herself take a tearing gasp and then another. She was trembling.

He began to move toward her, to close the three feet that separated them, but something in her eyes stopped him. His hand slowly lowered to his side again, but his eyes never left hers. He was trembling too.

He was waiting for her to begin. Standing there on the other end of the balcony, dressed in jeans, and a black turtleneck, his black leather jacket slightly damp from the last of the rain, he seemed to be almost casually visiting, or perhaps he thought that he could simply walk back in where he had left. That final inequity shocked her back to the present.

Time lurched and staggered forward.

“What? How? Why?” She realized that she wasn't making sense at exactly the same moment that it occurred to her that she wasn't even questioning his miraculous return. She stopped, still trying to catch her breath, trying to slow her racing heart.

He moved slightly forward again.

“Mulder? You're alive.” She was oddly surprised to find that her voice had gone level, calm.

“Scully. I’m...I’m sorry. I had to go. They said...” he paused, helpless, it seemed, to find the right words.

And then it was all sickeningly clear.

“They promised I’d get well?”

“Yes.” His eyes were completely opaque. She could read nothing in them.

“Where have you been? What did they...?” she was suddenly horrified at the implications, the possibilities. “Are you alright?”

His face stilled to a mask, clearly concealing something he didn’t yet have words for. But his gaze was direct; his eyes clearing a little. “I’m ok, Scully. I'm ok. The...situation changed recently.” He paused again.

“I came to you as soon as I could.”

“Why? Why are you here, Mulder? What do you want?” She would give no quarter. She had longed to see him every day, every hour for months, and now that she had finally come to a tentative peace with his absence he returned. Her wounds had been opened all over again, and she had always reacted to pain with anger. How dare he just waltz back into her life?

She thought she saw a faint surprise and a tiny flash of pain in his eyes, but then he shrugged almost carelessly. “I’m a free man again, Scully. Where else would I be?”

The words were almost a physical blow.

They answered every prayer she’d made in the last months, and they opened every wound. She was so tired of bleeding.

She’d let him go. She'd finally said goodbye, and he was back. She didn’t even know anymore what she wanted. She could neither imagine life with him or without him anymore.

But it still didn’t give him the right to do this to her.

She took a step toward him, beginning to cross the balcony toward the door where the curtains waved slightly in the evening breeze. His face began softening in relief, until he read her eyes.

He carefully straightened and met her too lucid stare.

“You left me, you son of a bitch! You were going to just _leave_ me! Didn’t you know what that would do to me? Didn’t you...” and she couldn’t complete the sentence. She had to let her eyes finish the thought.

Hazel held blue and all he did was nod, and then there was nothing to do but leave. To turn and walk away; out this life and into her next life. She brushed by him, through the curtains of the door and through the bedroom toward the door to the hotel hallway, forgetting that she was wearing nothing but her bathrobe. Knowing that she just had to be _away_ from him.

She was fine, right up until the point when he spoke her name. 

“Scully.” And in those two syllables, with just the barest hint of a break between them, she heard four years’ of undertones. Of passion, and longing, and fear, and loneliness and love.

She froze in her tracks, arrested like a child in a game of freeze tag, caught in mid-step, mid-breath, mid-heartbeat.

Dear god. Had she really intended to walk away? Yes, dammit, because he’d gone too far this time. Yes, because it was the end of it all. Yes, because she needed to, they needed to end this torture.

“Scully?”

No. She couldn't go. She couldn't leave. Because if she left, she would never again hear his voice speak her name, and she couldn't live without that.

She bowed her head, fighting the inevitable a moment longer. She turned to face the only future she had ever had.

“You left me.” Her voice was nothing more than a whisper, a suggestion of sound, her anger warring with her fear and the aching loneliness of the last months. “How could you do that to me? How could you leave me there dying alone?”

He made a strangled sound of denial, his face was nothing but planes and hard angles in the muted light of the room. “I had to go, Scully. They said it was the only chance. The only way you’d live.”

“You didn't give me a choice, Mulder. How could you make that decision for me?”

His eyes darkened with pain and something more. “There was only my decision, Scully. There was no choice to make.”

She watched his fathomless eyes for a long, measured moment, and then turned from him again, although her feet wouldn't carry her the final distance away. 

She heard him walk up behind her, hesitancy in every footstep, as though he expected her to startle and take flight.

He was reaching up to touch her shoulder when she turned, and his hand kept moving upward until it cupped her face. 

And it was the touch that finally undid her. His warm hand against her night-cooled skin that forced her to acknowledge that through the anger, through the pain, through the losses, she had always loved him. That there had never really been a question of her forgiving him.

“Mulder.” She tried, with the little breath she had, to infuse his name with acceptance, apology, and returned passion and love. There had never been many words between them.

He closed his eyes briefly and then opened them. His gaze was ravenous, devouring. He seemed terrified that she might yet vanish like some mirage. But she was no mirage, and there had never been any other way that this scene would end. 

“You would have left me?” His voice held eons of sorrow and fear.

“No, yes, I don’t know...” She closed her eyes for a moment. “No, Mulder, I couldn’t have left.” Wondering if he would hear the subtle change in her wording. 

“But...”

She placed gentle fingers across his lips. “Shhhh...it was just... I couldn’t have left. You know that.”

“I thought I knew...I...had hoped.” His hand moved against her face slightly, his fingers shifting a little to caress her hair.

Her fingers, seemingly of their own volition, stayed on his mouth, tracing the soft gentle curves. His breath caught and returned, just slightly ragged.

He was still, so still, under her gaze, under her fingers, which still traced the sensual lines that shifted under her touch, his lips parting slightly.

She couldn’t help herself. She slid her index finger just slightly between his teeth and her breath now grew ragged as she felt his tongue graze the sensitive pad of her fingertips.

He groaned and carefully reached up to capture her hand, and clasped it to his chest, his other arm gently wrapping around her waist.

“Scully?” he shut his eyes briefly and when he opened them again she thought she could see tears. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I shouldn’t have left, but I won’t apologize for going. Only for leaving you.”

“You shouldn’t have left, Mulder. I still haven’t completely forgiven you that.” Still watching him carefully, she drew a deep breath. “But it doesn’t matter right now.”

And then the fear and exhaustion and adrenaline of the months between suddenly drained away, and they were left with nothing but themselves and the final truth between them.

He drew a long, shuddering breath, and she was abruptly aware that they stood there nearly entwined. The surge of heat and quicksilver arousal that flashed through her caught her unawares, and she could feel the answering heat and hardness of Mulder’s arousal against her.

She leaned against his chest, inhaling the scent of the night and the day's rain and the musky, almost dusty smell that was Mulder.

She felt his face move against her hair; turning and rubbing, his breath hot against her ear and her cheek as he moved.

He was still whispering that he was sorry, that he shouldn't have left. And then the last vestige of the cold that she’d felt for so long flowed away, and she stopped his helpless murmuring with her lips.

Gently, carefully, she brushed her lips across his, taken unaware by the sudden arc of electricity that jolted through them both. She could feel the shock wave of it passing from her to him and back again -- endlessly looping around them, and through them and over them. 

He groaned and moved his hands to cradle her head. To still her moving mouth so that he could meet it in a kiss that stole her breath and gave her back her life.

His lips were warm and strong and tender. They moved over her with infinite gentleness that became a near bruising intensity. Her hands moved up to caress the back of his head and then moved to his neck and his shoulders.

The leather of his jacket was a sleek, sensuous delight under her fingers, but still she began to tug at it impatiently to remove it.

She could feel him smiling against her lips, and he shifted to help her remove his coat, moving his hands from her only long enough to shrug out of the sleeves. The garment hadn’t even finished its drop to the carpeted floor before they were entwined again.

The kiss changed again, mouths opening, gliding -- tongues touching, sliding, beginning to learn new territory. He tasted so good. Both dark and unexpected and familiar. Salt, honey, something undefined.

His hands left her head now, and began to roam. Restless, seeking, searing her through the rough fabric of her bathrobe. She was acutely aware that she wore nothing beneath the old white cloth. His ever?darkening eyes and ragged breathing told her that he too was aware of that.

She hissed her surprise and pleasure as his hands brushed her breasts. She could feel her nipples hardening as his fingers grazed the fabric covering them. She mirrored his actions: sliding her hands across the hard planes of his chest, smoothing her palms over his nipples and then scratching across them lightly with her nails. Now his breath came in short gasps.

And still their mouths met and clung.

Finally, her hands slid under his shirt, heat meeting heat. Her seeking fingers beginning to learn the story of his skin, and muscles and hair of his torso. He reluctantly pulled away just far enough to meet her eyes.

“Scully? Are you sure?” 

She couldn't believe he’d ask. That he didn’t know.

She smiled up at him. Watched his eyes darken to onyx, saw him read everything he ever needed to know in her open gaze, and then his head lowered to hers again, blocking out the light, blocking out reason.

His mouth on hers was a forest fire devouring everything in its path -- it was water in the desert.

If she had still been human she might have wept, but she no longer remembered such trivial emotions. She answered him with air, and precious metals.

Their hands began to roam again, learning form, texture, softness, heat. She again slid her hands beneath his sweater, and this time he leaned into them, a slight groan escaping him as her nails grazed his nipples, and then her fingers returned to touch and smooth.

His hands moved across her back, to her sides, and then finally to gently cup her breasts through her robe. At his touch, she closed her eyes and allowed her head to fall back, to expose her throat and to arch into his hands. She felt him move, and realized he’d dropped to one knee. She opened her eyes and looked down in time to see him dropping kisses along the open vee of her robe’s neckline, his hands tugging at the sash.

He looked up at her, their gaze arcing and sparking between them. She opened her robe, herself, and stepped out of it.

The expression on his face nearly stopped her heart. So serious, so intent, and at the same time she suddenly knew that he was so afraid that this was simply a dream and that he would wake up at any moment.

She caressed the side of his face, forcing him to look up at her.

“I'm real. You’re real. This is us.”

He closed his eyes, and whispered, “I know...I finally know.” And then crushed her to him, his head buried between her breasts, his arms wrapped around her as though he could absorb her into him.

She bent down and held him as tightly as she could, rocking him until his trembling changed to something else.

He released her and stood, pulling off his sweater as he rose, her hands reaching for the belt on his jeans. After releasing the buckle, she gently traced her hand over the swollen heat of his erection, and was rewarded by Mulder's sweet groan.

And then they stood before each other, naked and complete.

The bed was only steps away and it was the work of a second to strip the covers back.

She climbed into the bed and lay back as he lowered himself to her. Their bodies had been made for each other it seemed.

He shifted over her, his tongue and lips tracing love sonnets across her skin, imprinting her with his mark. His teeth gently scraped across her nipple and she arched and muttered and groaned.

Her hands traced the lean muscles of his back and chest, nails scratching and dragging, finger pads learning the braille of his perfect skin, and crisp hair and scars.

They moved together with nearly tidal cadences, the ebb and flow of their passions dragging them ever further out to sea, until the shore and safety and sanity were but distant memories.

And then his hand gently combed through the wiry curls at the juncture of her thighs, touching and stroking, until his fingers gently slipped into her core, finding her more than ready.

“Yes, oh yes.”

The waiting was finally over. He moved over and then in a single downstroke, thrust into her, embedding himself to the root, and then stilled.

Their eyes locked and she could finally see all of Mulder, could see all of her reflected in his eyes, could see nothing but them.

He stroked back, and as he returned, she rose to meet him.

His hard, hot length rocking in her and through her was an epiphany, a revelation, a homecoming.

Their thrusts were steady, controlled, but neither could sustain the patient rhythm for too long. She could feel her body beginning to unravel, her ties to mere earthly things like the bed and the room they were in loosening and releasing. As the fire flowed along her nerve endings, sparking out from where they were joined to her fingertips and toes and back, she could feel Mulder's body also begin to tremble. 

Their eyes met and locked, their breathing harshly synchronized gasps, their bodies lightly sheened with sweat as they rose and met and rocked back and rose and met.

And then she shattered, and she fell through the nothingness of space and stardust and the light of a thousand supernovas. In the midst of her disintegration, she felt him fly apart, and felt the waves of release that swept him away. 

They slept, entwined, complete, restored.

If something shatters, with enough patience and time and glue, you can put it back together again.

But sometimes, you need to gather all the shards and melt them in a crucible and create the object anew. It is the same, but not the same.

It is stronger.

It will endure.

END

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: The characters and situations of the X-Files are the property of Fox Broadcasting and 1013 Productions. No copyright infringement is intended.
> 
> My deepest thanks to Meredith -- a stellar writer and editor -- for her insight, patience and help.
> 
> The title and inspiration for this piece comes from a stunningly bittersweet sonnet by Pablo Neruda. It is Sonnet LX from the collection “100 Love Sonnets.”
> 
> Those who wanted to wound me wounded you,  
> and the dose of secret poison meant for me  
> like a net passes through my work - but leaves  
> its smear of rust and sleeplessness on you.
> 
> I don't want the hate that sabotaged me, Love,  
> to shadow your forehead's flowering moon;  
> I don't want some stupid random rancor  
> to drop its crown of knives onto your dream.
> 
> Bitter footsteps follow me;  
> a hideous grimace mocks my smile; envy spits  
> a curse, guffaws, gnashes its teeth where I sing.
> 
> And that, Love, is the shadow life has given me:  
> an empty suit of clothes that chases me,  
> limping, like as scarecrow with a bloody grin.


End file.
